Archive for July, 2007|Monthly archive page

1. Find the Face Behind the Result – This is aneat trick you can use on a Google Image search to filter the search results so that they include only images of people. How is this useful? Well, it could come in handy if you are looking for images of the prominent people behind popular products, companies, or geographic locations. You can perform this search by appending the code &imgtype=face to the end of the URL address after you perform a standard Google Image search.

2. Google + Social Media Sites = Quality Free Stuff– If you are on the hunt for free desktop wallpaper, stock images,WordPress templates or the like, using Google to search your favoritesocial media sites is your best bet. The word “free” in any standardsearch query immediately attracts spam. Why wade through potentialspam in standard search results when numerous social media sites havean active community of users who have already ranked and reviewed thespecific free items that interest you. All you have to do is directGoogle to search through each of these individual social media sites,and bingo… you find quality content ranked by hundreds of other people.

3. Find Free Anonymous Web Proxies – A freeanonymous web proxy site allows any web browser to access otherthird-party websites by channeling the browser’s connection through theproxy. The web proxy basically acts as a middleman between your webbrowser and the third-party website you are visiting. Why would youwant to do this? There are two common reasons:

You’re connecting to a public network at a coffee shop or internetcafé and you want privacy while you browse the web. You don’t want theadmin to know every site you visit.

You want to bypass a web content filter or perhaps a server-sideban on your IP address. Content filtering is common practice oncollege campus networks. This trick will usually bypass thoserestrictions.

There are subscription services and applications available such asTOR and paid VPN servers that do the same thing. However, this trickis free and easy to access from anywhere via Google. All you have todo is look through the search results returned by the queries below,find a proxy that works, and enter in the URL of the site you wantto browse anonymously.

4. Google for Music, Videos, and Ebooks – Googlecan be used to conduct a search for almost any file type, includingMp3s, PDFs, and videos. Open web directories are one of the easiestplaces to quickly find an endless quantity of freely downloadablefiles. This is an oldie, but it’s a goodie! Why thousands ofwebmasters incessantly fail to secure their web severs will continue toboggle our minds.

5. Browse Open Webcams Worldwide – Take arandomized streaming video tour of the world by searching Google forlive open access video webcams. This may not be the most productiveGoogle trick ever, but it sure is fun! (Note: you may be prompted toinstall an ActiveX control or the Java runtime environment which allowsyour browser to view certain video stream formats.)

6. Judge a Site by its Image – Find out what asite is all about by looking at a random selection of the images hostedon its web pages. Even if you are somewhat familiar with the targetsite’s content, this can be an entertaining little exercise. You willalmost surely find something you didn’t expect to see. All you have todo is use Google’s site: operator to target a domain in an image search.

7. Results Based on Third-Party Opinion –Sometimes you can get a better idea of the content located within awebsite by reading how other websites refer to that site’s content. The allinanchor: Google search operator can save yoularge quantities of time when a normal textual based search query failsto fetch the information you desire. It conducts a search based onkeywords used strictly in the anchor text, or linking text, of thirdparty sites that link to the web pages returned by the search query. In other words, this operator filters your search results in a way suchthat Google ignores the title and content of the returned web pages,but instead bases the search relevance on the keywords that other sitesuse to reference the results. It can add a whole new dimension ofvariety to your search results.

Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.

The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution,the theory could not exclude a role by God.

13. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” The company thought that the word “embarazar” (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”

12. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: “Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux.”

11. Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick,” a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the “Manure Stick.”

10. Coors put its slogan, “Turn It Loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer From Diarrhea.”

9. Pepsi’s “Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave” in Chinese.

8. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what’s inside, since many people can’t read.

7. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

6. Frank Perdue’s chicken slogan, “It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken,” was translated into Spanish as “it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”

5. When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its “Fly In Leather” campaign literally, which meant “Fly Naked” (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.

4. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the shirts read “I Saw the Potato” (la papa).

3. The Dairy Association’s huge success with the campaign “Got Milk?” prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read “Are You Lactating?”

2. General Motors had a very famous fiasco in trying to market the Nova car in Central and South America. “No va” in Spanish means, “It Doesn’t Go”.

1. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as “Kekoukela”, meaning “Bite the Wax Tadpole” or “Female Horse Stuffed with Wax”, depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent “kokoukole”, translating into “Happiness in the Mouth.”

Although only a tiny amount of Chinese crap is tested, 1 out of 100 items don’t even meet minimum quality standards.

From noupsell…“It is unfair and irresponsible for the U.S. media to single China out, play up China’s food safety problems and mislead the U.S. consumer,” 中华人民共和国 | Oh Yeah? Well tell that to some poor 90 year old Grandma who just lost her poodle ‘Muffycakes’ to a can of the poison shit on a stick you’re selling.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China warned the United States on Thursday against “groundless smear attacks” against Chinese products and said it was working responsibly to address concerns over a spate of recent food safety scares.

“The Chinese Government has not turned a blind eye or tried to cover up. We have taken this matter very seriously, acted responsibly and immediately adopted forceful measures,” said a statement by China’s embassy in Washington.

“Blowing up, complicating or politicizing a problem are irresponsible actions and do not help in its solution,” the Chinese mission said in a rare policy pronouncement.

“It is even more unacceptable for some to launch groundless smear attacks on China at the excuse of food and drug safety problems,” it said.

Echoing the Beijing government’s complaints about U.S. media reports, the embassy said food safety concerns were not unique to China, 99.2 percent of whose food exports to the United States in 2006 met quality standards.

FBI agents trying to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington high school last month sent the suspect a secret surveillance program designed to surreptitiously monitor him and report back to a government server, according to an FBI affidavit obtained by Wired News.

The court filing offers the first public glimpse into the bureau’s long-suspected spyware capability, in which the FBI adopts techniques more common to online criminals.

The software was sent to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against Timberline High School near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who on Monday pleaded guilty to making bomb threats, identity theft and felony harassment.

In an affidavit seeking a search warrant to use the software, filed last month in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington, FBI agent Norman Sanders describes the software as a “computer and internet protocol address verifier,” or CIPAV.

Sanders wrote that the spyware program gathers a wide range of information, including the computer’s IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer’s registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL.

The CIPAV then settles into a silent “pen register” mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every computer to which the machine connects for up to 60 days.

Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance — which does not capture the content of the communications — can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the data when using the internet. …From Wired

In the spirit of its mission statement, “The French Will Never Forget” (www.thefrenchwillneverforget.com), organized an extraordinary gathering of approximately 2500 people in Omaha Beach, Normandy for July 4 th 2007. The crowd formed on the sand the letters of the phrase: “FRANCE WILL NEVER FORGET”, aimed at honoring the fallen American heroes who scarified their lives to liberate France at the end of WW II.